Plus One: Damir Doma Adds Another Collection to Spring 2018

Sometimes boldly, sometimes confusingly, Damir Doma sails his own course. He just doesn’t do things like most designers. Case in point number one: The day before his presentation in Milan, he flew to Shanghai. Case in point number two: Although he already showed his womenswear for Spring 2018 during his coed menswear show in June, he was showing another womenswear collection for the same season in Milan. Huh?

Shanghai was not too far for us to track him down and dig up an explanation. The collection, titled Addition, is an adjunct of the collection shown in June. As Doma said, “It’s not just an addition, but a continuation of the June runway collection. I find it very relaxed, cool, and effortless and at the same time much more feminine than the runway collection.”

Colorful, pragmatic—in a Doma-flavored way—and eminently wearable, the collection boasts patchwork denim, tailoring, some volumized trenches, and a series of patchwork print separates. Around these relative novelties for the designer are sprinkled more conventional (for him at least), abstractedly deconstructed pieces featuring his trademark strapping.

Doma said he was thinking of a more practical, easy collection for a woman who travels—perhaps that’s why he spent his Milan presentation in Shanghai. We still can’t quite work out if Doma sees this as a capsule, a new line, or an—the clue’s in the name—addition to his Spring main line proper. Yet just because the collection, like this designer’s clothes, defies easy categorization doesn’t mean it isn’t worth noting.